Aspies For Freedom

If you haven't read it already, I highly recommend this article:

http://www.autistics.org/library/time.html

which discusses these points you've raised.

I've read that some Kanner's/LFA, actually, are also anti-cure...

I am what I guess you'd call 'mid functioning' autistic adult with some learning difficulties / retardation.
I am part-time verbal, with the aid of speech therapy in my teens but I can become involuntarily mute with little notice.

I have accompanying mental health and physical health issues

I work (just about) but I don't really socialise and I struggle with sensory issues.

For the record, I am anti- cure despite not being high-functioning.

The founders of (I think it was ANI, but I'm not 100% sure) one of the autism anti-cure organizations of the 1990s were all of the LFA type. The functioning labels do not determine who is pro- or anti- cure. With proper supports and services, someone considered LFA can be just as happy and happier than a person considered HFA. Although, I imagine it's harder, since so many people who need these supports are put into institutions, abused, and so many other problems due to the lack of adequate support and the prejudices of society.

Not that it's a walk through the park, but it's not that we argue that being HFA is easy, or that we lack problems. So having difficulties, being disabled, is not itself a reason to want a cure. Where people often put the division is to where people put the dividing line between "should be cured/I think I'd want to be cured in that position" and "should not be cured/I would not want to be cured". We use the labels HFA and LFA to denote this distinction.

Of course not all autism is equal, but the differences and the lines we draw to demonstrate these differences are not themselves the reason for believing that that type of person should or should not be cured, nor are they the reason why that group of person would believe that they should or want to be cured or not.

Hedgehog - I pretty much agree with everything you say. Speech therapy can be very positive, and I support anyone's efforts to teach people to speak. The only exception I take is when the therapist is forceful, abusive, or something of that nature, and when the type of therapy employed is just training someone to use speech so they can speak, whether or not the person is being taught to communicate.

After all, one can speak things and still not be speaking of what they want/need to express. That's why assistive communication technologies are so important for those who aren't going to speak, or who can speak but it takes too much energy. That option should always be available.

I often don't clean house, but I can make myself do it.  I just hate it, especially doing it totally alone.

Right, but I don't think that determines actual functioning level in an AS/autistic person, in any way.... sorry.  Not anymore that it would do for NTs.

Lack of motivation/poor self-esteem have much the same effect on an individual, regardless of neurotype.

I imagined a video for Genesis "Invisible Touch", our cat (Caesar, a domestic longhair, gray) grown to maybe twenty times its size, attacking the jerk crowd.  

I think the divide is like this: People who take care of autistics, autistic peoples' family members, and a minority of autistic people are in favor of a cure. Autistic people themselves and a minority of their family members and caretakers are generally in favor of acceptance. This is probably more of a 60/40 rather than 90/10 thing, but I think more of us want to be accepted than want to be cured. This is further obfuscated by the fact that many of the curebie autistics just fit into that category because they have been told repeatedly that they need a cure and haven't realized the existence of the alternative. And there are a lot of autism moms who are sick of their kids being seen as defective and come down on the no-cure end of the debate.

At the nonverbal end of the spectrum, it looks more curebie simply because it's easier for the non-autistic people to speak for the autistic when the autistic person is having a hard time speaking at all. But as soon as said autistic person learns to communicate unambiguously, it seems as though they tend to fall into the "stop trying to cure me" group at the same rate as the people who've been speaking all their lives.

Cure would presume acceptance into society.
Everyone wants acceptance, really, then.
The parents really then want their kids accepted by the other kids, by the significant others puberty and thereafter, and the employers after graduation.  

There is no cure for autism.
There are skill strategies to promote acceptance into the NT-dominated culture.  
1.  How are we to manage if we don't try to be accepted into the culture?  Live homeless or on a pittance from the Bushies?  Or suicide?
2.  And a note for the NTs.  Will you make room for all of us, help us fit in?  Yes, the Nazis killed people.  But they didn't let them suffer living.

Here's the thing.  Excessive willpower got me through electrical engineering, extreme perseveration.  But nothing, nothing, nothing could get me a JOB in engineering.

Effort, willpower, perseveration all work up to a point.  And then you are screwed!  Yeah, it's like, wow, how could you get through that impossible degree program, and then FAIL to get a job.  Um, because school was all me, and job is all them???????

Well, there's a difference between Aspie perseveration and the more NTish concept of willpower, in my opinion.  They are closely related concepts, though.  But... not quite the same.

I just noticed that this was a blog post. The url sited in the first link is iamapuzzle .org

This is too bad, that she doesn't understand that it's not so simple as LFAs think/want/should want one thing, whereas HFAs think/want/should want this other thing.

Many. Perhaps most of those who can communicate their opinions to us.

Of course not all autism is equal. We can't speak for anybody other than ourselves; but we can insist that people listen to others of all functioning levels. Just because something is a disability, as autism usually is, doesn't mean that it automatically needs to be cured--especially when, as with autism, it is such a fundamental part of the brain that it is inextricably linked with the basic personality.

I don't know how many times I've had to stress this, but the fact that people with autism are so diverse doesn't change that we all have the same basic rights as human beings; and one of those rights is being accepted as we are. I don't care if you're a nonverbal 30 year old with a measurable IQ of 10; you still deserve the same respect as a genius Aspie with a Nobel Prize, and nobody has a right to try to mess around with your personality without your permission. If you can't give permission, then they can't mess with it. Simple as that.

Disability is a neutral thing, not something evil or frightening. That means that getting rid of it shouldn't be your first priority. In some cases, it's not a priority at all. A cure means changing who you are. Unless you yourself want that change, then leaving your mind alone is always a greater priority than making you normal.

That said, autism treatment and education? Go for it. Like anybody, we need education to realize our potentials, whether that's using picture boards or getting a Ph.D. And we often have emotional, physical, and sensory problems that require treatment--therapy, medication, and various accommodations. Saying that you don't want your autism cured doesn't mean that you don't want help for the problems it causes or comes along with. After all, we help neurotypical kids learn math, because their brains don't naturally learn it; why not help an Aspie kid learn social skills? Therapy, unless it's rigorous and overwhelming and doesn't take your feelings into account, can really help an autistic person. Consider it part of the education process.

There's a lot of Aspies, me included, whose brains don't naturally learn Math.

And if someone with Asperger's and related problems doesn't desire therapy, why should they feel guilty?  You seem to imply it as "necessary education" where to me it is often a pox and a waste of money.

Yeah, I don't therapy in general would have helped me much as a child. No doubt it helps some people but I don't think kids should be forced into having it if it really upsets them.